Sunday, April 15, 2012

Dark Side of the World


The world is a big place. It is filled with many mysteries and wonders, but darkness lurks here as well. People do things to each other, they use others for their personal gain, they wage wars on each other, they abuse others, and some would do just about anything for money. It is sad but true to know that child trafficking exists on our planet.

In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, many contemporary subjects are integrated within the story line, whether it be genetically modified animals or made up diseases created to make a profit. A main issue is the one of child trafficking. Oryx’s history is one filled with misery and slavery, from a young age, this girl, living in poor conditions, was sold and forced to perform acts that were horrid, for money. Recall that Oryx was brought to Jack after uncle En died, and she was forced to participate in porn movies. This situation reminded me of a movie that came out in 2008 called Slumdog Millionaire. In this movie, the main character, Jamal, retells a series of events that occurred during his life, one of those events was when he was taken by a man. Jamal’s job: get money from tourists. He would go out day after day and beg for money from people visiting the country. This does not only happen in fiction. All over the world this type of child slavery exists. The boys are forced to become beggars, and the girls are forced to become prostitutes.

Oryx’s situation is similar to so many other stories out there, since child trafficking exists all over the world. In the following story, Sreypov Chan, a young girl, was sold to a brothel when she was 7 years old. For many years she was forced to engage in sexual acts and if she didn’t meet her quota she would be tortured and punished. We can see the similarities with Oryx’s story here. Both girls were sold by their mothers to strangers at a very young age, and both were forced to engage in sexual acts with men. To read further about Sreypov Chan’s story visit this link: http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/diary-escaped-sex-slave

          If you are interested to read or listen to more stories like this one, click the link below: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/27098993/ns/today-today_news/t/teen-recounts-horror-abduction-sex-slavery/

To conclude, our world is a big place. As previously mentioned, the book Oryx and Crake discusses a number of issues happening today. Child trafficking can be found everywhere and it is sad to see that helpless children become slaves and are forced to do tasks in order to satisfy whoever owns them. Our planet is a big place, but does it have to be one filled with darkness?

2 comments:

  1. You raise quite an interesting question at the end of your blog. Yes we know that there is darkness in the world, but is it at all possible to stop it, to change human nature. This is exactly what Crake attempted to do by altering the human genome to the point where they became almost a different species. Yes he did eliminate the darkness you mention, but at what cost, and is such an extreme measure the only way we can achieve a safer world?

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  2. Yes I also agree. Through the crackers, Crake was able to eliminate this behaviour but the beings he created were not humans anymore. They were all beautiful and perfect but for Snowman they were not attractive because it is the "flaws in the design" that he liked. Also, Crake edited out the idea of history, which is something very important for humans. I think it could have been possible to eliminate such darkness in humans without changing the entire human nature if Crake hadn't made all these other changes.

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